Beyond Reason
by Mouse
Summary: During the strike, Dutchy's faith is questioned in a brief conversation with a girl.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: This takes place after the rally and Jack's subsequent arrest and conversation with Pulitzer, when the newsies are shown chanting "Stop the World!" outside the gate.  
  
  
It was a hot afternoon, the sun burning full above the streets of Manhattan, dust kicking up with the footsteps of men and horses. The fever did not extend to those trudging in the heat, the working classes, enthusiasm drained by the dry, sweltering monotony. No longer were they interested in the crowd shouting in front of the imperious gates of The World building. Even the desperation-driven resolution of the protesting newsboys was fading, crude signs reading "strike!" faltering lower in their hands.  
  
The voices no longer cried out in unison; rather, they rose against each other in frustration, fatigue, confusion. Figures were drifting from the edge of the pack, seeking space, air, rest. On the street curb, one particular boy leaned away from the crowd, face turned distractedly, or perhaps unseeing, to the arm of sky stretched above. A lank of blond hair fell over his face, dusty glasses sliding on his nose when he looked down at the girl who stopped across from him.  
  
She was not a distinctively small girl, but her frail frame made her appear so, sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms and hands holding to a large, sagging washbucket. Hair crept out from underneath the handkerchief tied over her head; brown, or else just dirty, like the rest of her.  
  
"So who's winning?" she asked him, her voice lighthearted, her face plain with hopelessness.  
  
The boy reached up to fumble off his hat, a wooden sign hanging unread against his leg. "Depends on who you ask," he replied mildly, a touch uncertain. His accent fell slightly short of the thick New Yawk street burr, though his speech pattern followed that of the other newsies.  
  
"Who'm I askin' now?" The bucket wavered in her grip and she hiked it up, dirty water splashing at the rim.  
  
His thin shoulders seized in a shrug and he returned the hat to his head. "Dutchy." He held his hands to the bottom of the bucket, steadying her.  
  
The name registered unfamiliar to her. She knew of the more famed newsies; the strike leader, the one they called Cowboy, and David, the educated one, the Walkin' Mouth. She knew of Spot Conlon, the leader of the Brooklyn newsies, because everyone did. She knew the name Kid Blink, the newsie who had been calling out headlines when she was carrying out water-- much the same as now-- and had stumbled, spilling down the front of her skirt; he'd sold her a paper and tried to help her mop up the water with it.  
  
Dutchy, she knew not. He was one of the faceless, nameless, nothing but a corporate idea, a general term. But it was his face that looked down at her quietly when the bucket was eased out of her arms, allowing her to rub her cramped wrists.  
  
"Jack and Dave say we can do it," he licked his lips, squinting in the sunlight.  
  
"And you believe 'em?" She was not skeptical, but genuinely curious, and she held his sign for him, studying it.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Why?"  
  
He shrugged again. "Sometimes, there ain't a reason. You just . . . do it."  
  
The girl's face did not change, fingers tightening on the edge of the wooden sign. Then she laughed. "You believe 'em when they say it," she said. "But it ain't so easy when it's just you."  
  
She took the basin back; he retrieved his sign.  
  
"I don't have to say it," Dutchy half-smiled, but he was slouching with weariness,   
with indifference to the cries behind him.  
  
The girl took a step back, her chin cocked up at him. "Yeah you do," her voice softened a little. "Where's the Cowboy?"  
  
He looked around the milling newsboys, but it was reflex; he knew the missing figure. "I don't know."  
  
"But he ain't here."  
  
"But he's somewhere." Shoulders were slumped, but the fair-haired boy remained standing and did not look away from her face. "He's somewhere, and he's . . . he's him, y'know?"  
  
The girl looked away, at the brawling newsboys, at the unflinching gate, at the so-called scabbers beginning to drift into line near the desk to buy their papers. Then she looked at Dutchy's face, and one corner of her mouth tugged briefly as she shouldered strands of hair out of her eyes. "When you say it," she told him. "I believe it."  
  
"Here." Grinning now, he propped the sign up in her basin so the words were visible above the rim.  
  
"What does it say?" she asked, stepping back once but no farther.  
  
"Strike."  
  
"Yeah, take it back." She shook her head, shifting the bucket against her hip. "I ain't goin' on strike till I see you guys win."  
  
Dutchy's head tilted. "You said you believed me."  
  
"Maybe I don't believe me yet."  
  
He lifted the sign out of the bucket, wiping the dripping post against his pant leg. She started ambling away, past him, past the newsies as they swelled, Dutchy included, against the gate when one stiff, grey-clothed scab walked out under escort of Mr. Wiesel and company, walked in silence, but not to silence. Jack, Cowboy, the leader of the pack, the fuel behind their wrath, confined in a cold, expensive suit, face wooden to their outbursts of shock, of confusion and anger at his sudden, inexplicable betrayal.  
  
Dutchy slipped back, hand holding tightly to his sign, as though to remind himself of the Cause, the Purpose, that it was an idea he was fighting for, not a person, not anymore. His eyes strayed, over his shoulder, and he could see the girl, but her back was to him, to the traitorous Cowboy, and her step was springing, her head higher with a faint, growing hope, a hope come from faith, a faith come from comfort in the quiet words of a brainwashed newsie. 


End file.
